San Diego, CA – May 24, 2018 – Zia Corporation, a provider of mobile and cloud-based project management solutions, today announced the general availability of Zia Mapper Photo Manager. The Zia Mapper Photo Manager is a customized photo management mobile application for land surveyors and design-build professionals to simplify, organize, and revolutionize job site workflows.

“Photos are generally used to document site conditions or provide additional reference details and while this is the best format to use, a lack of good organization and management of the photos can become a problem and create additional overhead when working on projects,” said Brian Jaquess, Zia Corporation Founder and Chief Developer. "We believe in simplifying, organizing, and revolutionizing the land development process by creating efficient and cost saving mobile & web apps and Zia Mapper Photo Manager is designed to do just that."

Zia Mapper Photo Manager simplifies the tasks of organizing, shooting, mapping and annotating photos taken on a job site. Leveraging the built-in camera of Android or iOS mobile devices, Zia Mapper Photo Manager allows users to quickly snap photos which are automatically appended with accurate GPS coordinates and displayed on mapping backgrounds, as well as providing options for entering text-based annotations about the photo. The app organizes photos into project folders for quick sorting and output to reports in Adobe .pdf format which can be instantly emailed to other project stakeholders for increased team efficiency. Zia Mapper Photo Manager revolutionizes daily operations because it’s bringing together key technologies into one specialized project management mobile app that saves time, providing a clear return on investment.

“When it comes to project management and the organization of site photos, the right technologies save us valuable time,” said Mike Douglass, Vice President of Surveys for Smith Engineering in Roswell, New Mexico. “In a business as fast-paced and detail-oriented as civil engineering & land surveying, that often means the difference between accurate, high-quality work and subpar deliverables. Whether it’s avoiding duplicate field points or photos, catching important details, or delivering thorough surveys to a client, the right technology can make all the difference.”

Brian Jaquess summarized, “While this application was designed to improve workflows with industry-specific use cases in mind, it offers the same benefits for users in other roles, such as building inspectors, insurance adjusters, and commercial / residential realtors.”

Zia Mapper Photo Manager completed Beta testing in March 2018 and was just released as a free application for individual users on Google Play and the Apple Store. Additionally, Zia Corporation is currently working on enhancing features for the mobile app and expects to start developing a cloud-based version to enable large project teams to collaborate between the field and office later in 2018.

About Zia Corporation
Streamlining workflow from field to finish, Zia Mapper is an industry-groundbreaking software technology startup developed by land development professionals for land development professionals. Our mission is to provide specialized mobile and web applications to solve real problems and revolutionize how design-build professionals manage the ancillary details associated with a project.

]]>Insights from a Land Surveyor: Part II The Power of Having the Right Tool for the Right Jobhttp://ziaphotomapper.com/land-surveyor-insights-part-two/
http://ziaphotomapper.com/land-surveyor-insights-part-two/#respondMon, 18 Sep 2017 23:03:38 +0000http://ziaphotomapper.com/?p=243This article is the second part of a guest post series by an expert land surveyor on his experience using current technologies to manage site photos that inform topographic surveys. In case you missed it, read Part I here! “Isn’t there a simpler way to manage site photos?” I’ve asked myself this question countless […]

]]>This article is the second part of a guest post series by an expert land surveyor on his experience using current technologies to manage site photos that inform topographic surveys. In case you missed it, read Part I here!

“Isn’t there a simpler way to manage site photos?”

I’ve asked myself this question countless times since I began working as a land surveyor.

Like I mentioned in my last post, the current technology that most of my colleagues and myself use for mapping site photos requires various workarounds to serve our needs. Such makeshift solutions don’t offer me the ease of use that I need to streamline the topographic survey process.

On top of that, the inevitable human error that’s involved in surveying makes organized, clearly annotated site photos all the more imperative to avoid inaccuracies in our plans.

Ensuring Accurate Topographic Surveys & Plans

One of the many areas where there’s room for human error is in the coding process. Field crews occasionally end up “fat fingering” a field code, meaning they make a typo that causes a “bust” in the line work or symbol generated from the field survey in the CAD drawing. Even something as simple as typing “FJ” instead of “FH” can mean a missing fire hydrant at its location in the plans we develop.

Or the chief may simply forget to change the code in the data collector. Maybe he’s collecting a series of curb shots and then jumps to a gutter shot without changing the code. Unfortunately, even such a small mistake will cause an inaccurate line in the deliverable.

Most of our field crews are very good at what they do, but photography isn’t their strong point. Which makes deciphering site photos and aligning them with the code difficult at times.

When I’ve reviewed site photos our crews have taken, I’ve often found myself asking, “Why did they take this?” and having to call up the chief for an explanation. But if too much time has passed, they don’t necessarily even remember the photo in question!

Improving on Traditional Site Photo Tools

These limitations are some of the reasons why a site photo tool created by land surveyors for land surveyors is appealing to me. Let me share a real life example to better illustrate this need:

I recently worked on an ALTA/NSPS survey for a condominium project in a community 150 miles from where our offices are located. Our field crew ended up collecting about 900 field points and took around 100 photos over 2 days on site for this project.

A few days later when I was in the office reviewing the field points and photos taken on site, I came across one particular close-up of a manhole. I immediately wondered why they had photographed this specific manhole when the site included 15 total—but I didn’t think much of it at the time.

But then when I was reviewing the deliverable before sending it out, I noticed that the sewer line shown on our plan didn’t look right.

When I got the surveyor on the phone and asked him if the collected field point was really a sewer manhole, he explained that he’d taken that particular photo to show me that this specific manhole had a sewer manhole cover when it was actually a storm drain.

Following protocol, the surveyor had collected the point as a sewer manhole cover since that’s how it presented on site. That point was displayed in the CAD drawing with a sewer manhole symbol and used to draft in the sewer line, which meant that our plans were wrong.

Frankly, I got pretty lucky that he was available to answer my question and that he still remembered the site photo. But, more often than not, a field surveyor might forget this incredibly valuable information before it’s incorporated into the plans.

Which would mean a 6-hour roundtrip drive plus the time needed to confirm that the field shot was correct!

Figure 5. Manhole Photo (Without Zia Photo Manager)

Figure 6. Manhole Photo (With Zia Photo Manager)

Building on Decades of Land Surveying Experience

If there’s a question about an existing site condition, I’ve found that a well-documented photo clears it up 99% of the time. And such organized, meticulous records are essential to keep customers happy and avoid litigation. The Zia Photo Manager app easily facilitates this process, storing and sorting photos by date, geographic location, project site, and various manual tags.

We may not have had this kind of technology when I was a kid, but I’m excited to share this new app with my colleagues to better support our industry.

]]>http://ziaphotomapper.com/land-surveyor-insights-part-two/feed/0Insights from a Land Surveyor: Part I The Power of Having the Right Tool for the Right Jobhttp://ziaphotomapper.com/land-surveyor-insights-part-one/
http://ziaphotomapper.com/land-surveyor-insights-part-one/#commentsMon, 18 Sep 2017 20:32:53 +0000http://ziaphotomapper.com/?p=226We’re excited to share this two-part guest post by a veteran southern-California land surveyor on his experience using current technologies to manage site photos that inform topographic surveys. Enjoy! Like many other land surveyors I know, I grew up in the profession. My dad was a surveyor who ran his own small business, so I […]

]]>We’re excited to share this two-part guest post by a veteran southern-California land surveyor on his experience using current technologies to manage site photos that inform topographic surveys. Enjoy!

Like many other land surveyors I know, I grew up in the profession. My dad was a surveyor who ran his own small business, so I was helping him out and learning the ropes beneath the hot West Texas sun as far back as I can remember.

Of course, technology has changed quite a bit since my early days working with my dad. In many ways, technological progress has made our jobs as land surveyors easier. The advancements made in GPS technology have considerably reduced field time, allowing us to collect points much faster. A topo survey which used to take a 3-man crew a couple of days can now be performed by one person with an RTK GPS receiver in less than 8 hours.

The advancements in the current field equipment technology mean we can capture more data faster and with less field time. However, this also means that there’s more data to manage and more field points to QC—leaving more room for error. With just a minor typo or forgotten detail, even some of our go-to software tools are rendered futile and days of work lost.

Avoiding Human Error in Field Work

As land surveyors, we’re charged with being the measurement experts and creating accurate mapping products, which means that even small errors can lead to huge problems down the line, for ourselves or our clients. That’s why we encourage all of our employees to take as many site photos as possible whenever they visit a project. As the saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

These days, we may have hundreds of site photos even for a small project. Managing these photos can be burdensome and time consuming, which is why it’s so important for us to use the best site photography application available—one that makes labelling, organizing, storing, and locating job photos a snap.

Site Photos: A Project Manager’s Eyes on the Ground

Chances are your business is as careful about dotting your i’s and crossing your t’s as my team is—which means your staff on site are likely taking copious amounts of project photos during every visit. After all, when it comes to project management, the more information the better.

One of our field crews typically collects this information and then sends it to a drafter or designer in the office, who has usually never seen the site in person. This makes site photos especially useful for those of us out of the field as we strive to understand site conditions and develop plans accordingly.

The project photos are particularly valuable to me when I’m processing the field work to ensure that it meets our high control standards. They also prove extremely helpful when monitoring construction, as site photos document current conditions that might be missing from other data sources.

Making Limited Photographic Tools Work for Topographic Surveys

Depending on the size and complexity of a site, our field crews may collect hundreds or even thousands of field points for a topographic survey. Each of these points is coded by the field surveyor when they collect it to represent an existing feature in the field (i.e., a point collected at a “fire hydrant” may be manually coded as “FH” by the party chief in the field).

Figure 2. Field Point Coordinate Report

Once the field points are processed through a translator in the office, they’re imported into a CAD drawing, after which they appear as dots with a point number on a black background. During this process, symbols corresponding to the field code and lines joining the same codes automatically appear in the drawing.

Figure 3. Field Points Processed into CAD Drawing

The final step in the process is to QC the symbols and lines in the CAD drawing to make sure that they correctly represent the existing conditions of the site. When I review topographic surveys, I typically have Google Earth, Google Street View, or Bing Maps open on my computer. These tools weren’t specifically designed for mapping purposes, but they give me a general overview of the site and aid me in checking the field data while preparing a topographic survey. For a more detailed look, I scroll the project photos the crew took while on site.

Figure 4. Sample Topo Finished Product

The Limitations of Existing Tools

While the available mapping software programs are effective tools in their own ways, they have clear drawbacks.

If, for example, a project site is located in a rural area, I may be unable to access a “street view” or I might receive outdated imagery if I do access it. This may mean that I have to send my crew back out to collect more data and take more photos, or even visit the site myself in order to answer any questions the designer has with the survey.

And this can mean multiple hours, or even days, worth of extra work—and wasted company resources.

This is just one of the many challenges I face trying to use existing mapping programs with site photos for my topographic survey needs. In part 2 of this discussion, I share a project case study that illustrates other challenges with the current site photo processes many land surveying firms have in place—and I introduce a potential solution that might just make our jobs a little easier!

]]>http://ziaphotomapper.com/land-surveyor-insights-part-one/feed/2From the Surveyor’s Desk: An Interview With Civil Engineering Pro Mike Douglasshttp://ziaphotomapper.com/civil-engineering-pro-mike-douglass/
http://ziaphotomapper.com/civil-engineering-pro-mike-douglass/#respondFri, 15 Sep 2017 20:48:56 +0000http://ziaphotomapper.com/?p=229Recently, Zia had the opportunity to interview land surveyor and civil engineering professional Michael Douglass. With decades in the field, Mr. Douglass is the Vice President Survey Project Manager for Smith Engineering based in Roswell, New Mexico. Mr. Douglass offers some key insights into the importance of site photography for land surveying and project management. […]

]]>Recently, Zia had the opportunity to interview land surveyor and civil engineering professional Michael Douglass. With decades in the field, Mr. Douglass is the Vice President Survey Project Manager for Smith Engineering based in Roswell, New Mexico. Mr. Douglass offers some key insights into the importance of site photography for land surveying and project management.

Zia Mapper (ZM): Give us an overview of Smith Engineering and your role in the company.

Mike Douglass (MD): We’re a civil engineering firm, so we work mostly on infrastructure projects, streets and utilities, and drainage. We have about 60 employees in three offices in Roswell, Albuquerque, and Las Cruces, New Mexico. I’m in charge of the surveying to support the infrastructure projects, as well as boundary surveys, subdivision work, and ALTA surveys. We have a two-man crew that does most of the surveying, so I’m in the office a lot of the time, but I go out in the field occasionally.

ZM:Once you’ve finished surveying, what deliverables do you bring to your clients when working on a job?

MD: It’s normally a 24″ x 36″ full-size project plan set with construction drawings. Our half-size set, an 11″ x 17″ plan, includes our existing-condition topographic survey and a boundary survey. And then the different construction drawings may be included.

ZM:So, throughout this process, you’re preparing all the final deliverables for the client. What are some of the typical problems you’ve encountered within the workflow?

MD: Sometimes we have experienced issues related to how the design survey is completed and how things are documented. We normally run a GPS base with two rovers, so we have two people actually doing the survey, walking around in different directions collecting field points and typing in the corresponding code. For example, to mark the top of a curb, we type in ‘TC’. This process means you either end up with some overlap or some gaps in the survey. The surveyors try to communicate before they get started, but then as they’re out running around on different sides of the project, it’s difficult to keep talking to each other.

Then all that data is brought into a drawing in the office using CAD technology. What the draftsman is going to see is a dot with the ‘TC’ [top of curb] code. He’ll connect all the TCs from the code and then draw that line as a curb. Some of that can get confusing, so it’s best to either draw sketches or take photos on site to help out the draftsmen so they can see how those dots are supposed to connect.

ZM: What can you tell me about the importance of photographs in civil engineering & surveying?

MD: I use photographs for anything that I could possibly think might be confusing to the draftsman or a designer. Before they came out with camera phones, we’d go pick up a disposable camera to use in the field, but now that you’ve got a camera in your pocket all the time, there’s no reason not to use it for anything that could confuse a draftsman or a client, especially if the site is a ways out of town.

A lot of our projects are 80 miles or more away from our office, so if a draftsman needs clarification, it’s not easy for him to go out to the site and check it out directly. Even when the surveyor is out in the field, the codes he’s typing in may make sense to him as he’s on site, but they won’t necessarily make sense to him once he gets back to the office. Additionally, we often go to multiple projects a day, so sometimes it’s hard to remember what it was I took a picture of or what site I was at.

We also do construction observation, although I don’t personally get involved with much of that. But the field crews on those projects take a ton of photos to document construction progress.

ZM:How do you use photos for documentation purposes, communication purposes, and then creating the deliverable?

MD: A lot of our focus is on documenting what we’re seeing out in the field so that we can better communicate to the designer or draftsman what it is that we’re shooting and what the codes describe. And for the deliverable, sometimes we’ll include photos with an ALTA/NSPS survey (land title survey), so it’s helpful to have very clear documentation of those photos to know which image corresponds to which survey point.

ZM:How would you say technological advancements have impacted the industry?

MD: I’ve been around since before any of this was around, but it just makes it so much easier with the new technology. There are ways to get that information in the field without the new technology, like doing it the “old school” way with a level and a tape measurer and drawing a bunch of sketches, but it takes way more time to complete. It’s possible to survey without it, but it sure is a lot easier having phones and GPS cameras.

ZM: Does your firm have a system in place for project photo management?

MD: No, we don’t. It would be great to be able to manage photos in the field, but we don’t currently have a system in place or any technology that we use to manage project photos. That sounds like a good idea.

ZM: So, how important would you say is the use of mobile apps in the field in the civil engineering industry?

MD: I would say very important.

Finding the Right Tech for Civil Engineering Professionals

When it comes to project management and the organization of site photos, the right technologies save us valuable time. And, in a business as fast-paced and detail-oriented as civil engineering & land surveying, that often means the difference between accurate, high-quality work and subpar deliverables. Whether it’s avoiding duplicate field points or photos, catching important details, or delivering thorough surveys to a client, the right tech can make all the difference.

]]>http://ziaphotomapper.com/civil-engineering-pro-mike-douglass/feed/0Site Photos as Safeguards Against Construction Litigationhttp://ziaphotomapper.com/construction-litigation-safeguards/
http://ziaphotomapper.com/construction-litigation-safeguards/#respondWed, 13 Sep 2017 01:01:21 +0000http://ziaphotomapper.com/?p=1If a picture is worth a thousand words, it can also save you thousands of dollars. The Schinnerer Group reported that payouts for insurance claims against design professional policyholders for large architerctual projects can result in severe damages of over 2 million dollars. XL Catlin’s 2009 “Risk Drivers” report also revealed that nearly 40% of […]

The following scenario was adapted from an actual legal case: Clide Land Surveying, a land surveying firm in Colorado, faced a lawsuit for allegedly providing an inaccurate ALTA/NSPS survey of a large real property to a commercial developer, Tremant Development. The developer claimed that the sewer pipeline for which there was a previously existing easement was mapped incorrectly on the final ALTA/NSPS survey that Clide delivered.

The claim

While beginning construction on an in-ground pool as part of a major building project for a new hotel, Tremant’s crew hit a municipal sewer pipeline when digging, causing a substantial leak that required major repairs and significant money owed to the government in damages. Tremant Development claimed that the sewer line mapped on the original ALTA survey completed by Clide was off by several feet, placing direct blaim on the surverying firm for this costly error.

The defense

A veteran firm in the industry, Clide Land Surveying had taken care to document every step in the surveying process, down to the sewer line in question. The surveyors on that project had taken over 500 photos of the property, painstakingly capturing a photo at each notable point collected on the site, including pipelines and manholes.

What Clide hadn’t done was organize those photos. All 500+ images were stored in a single electronic folder along with other materials for the project. The owners knew they had the evidence they needed to defend against the lawsuit, but where was it exactly? They had no system in place to organize and locate job photos associated with a given project.

The Clide team essentially had to locate a needle in a haystack. The company poured all its manpower into non-billable hours sorting through photos and trying to match them with the site map. Luckily, after nearly a week a staffmember stumbled upon what they were looking for: photographs of the sewer markers and manhole associated with the pipeline, showing the same coordinates that were mapped on the final deliverable submitted to Tremant Development. It was just the proof they needed, just in time.

The outcome

Once Clide produced this evidence, the lawsuit quickly disappeared and it became clear that the error in pool placement stemmed from later designs developed by Tremant itself—Clide was in the clear. Still, the non-billable time spent searching through disorganized site photos had added up and Clide faced a financial loss of several thousand dollars, plus valuable time taken away from other projects.

While the owners of Clide Land Surveying were able to resolve the dispute before experiencing any legal ramifications, they were very fortunate to be able to locate the necessary site photos in time—and they came much too close for comfort. Subsequently, they spent additional company resources developing a streamlined photo management system as part of their project management workflow, carefully filing and annotating images to ensure easy retrieval in case they’re ever needed in the future.

Protecting Your Firm Against Similar Lawsuits

As this example clearly demonstrates, the process of visual record-keeping is crucial for any firm involved in land development, from the small, family-owned land surveying business to the international AE Design Consulting firm.

Global insurance company XL Catlin advises firms not to just document the surveying or construction process using site photos, but to have a clear system in place for managing and storing those photos: they state that best practice is to organize and store this evidence “contemporaneously, documenting and closing out the work as it is performed, and saving the information in an easy-to-access format that is agreed upon, consistent, and understood by all team members.” For the strongest evidence, they advise using photos that have a date, GPS coordinates, and a clear description or identification of the condition/point captured.

Morgan C. Smith, a construction law attorney and president/founder of Cogent Legal, has seen the outcome of construction litigation come down to photographic evidence time and again. He shares the following dilemma that he and his colleagues consistently face in these cases:

You are trying to prepare your case for mediation, and you have a hard drive full of photographs of the site from all different sources; it’s unclear what the photos show, where the scene is located, or even when the photograph was taken. You may have reams of images that look something like the example below [structural wood framing with a large area of what looks like black mold], without any context for understanding.

As Smith explains, “what is lacking is any point of reference, location or time” attached to the photographs, which makes it especially difficult when sorting through hundreds or thousands of site photos. This lack of context is most challenging in legal cases where “a solid photographic record is required of the exact condition of any item over time” – which is typically the case in construction defect or AE-related litigation or insurance claims.

To avoid such complications, Smith stresses that it’s important to have “a system in place that creates, annotates and organizes visuals” and can evolve with the project over time. This system should form part of your firm’s broader project management protocol.

New Technology Simplifies the Photo Management Process

By implementing a proper photographic survey system that attaches site photos to specific projects and stores them in a centralized location accessible by the entire team, AE firms can ensure that they’re properly safeguarded against construction litigation.

Zia Mapper’s Photo Manager offers an easy solution in a smartphone app that enables design professionals and developers to shoot, map, and annotate job photos from the field, simplifying the reporting and documentation process. For early access to this revolutionary app, click hereto apply to be a beta tester.